Rhonda Benin has never waited around for the phone to ring. One of the Bay Area's most resourceful vocalists, she's deeply versed in the entire continuum of African American music, a soul powerhouse who infuses everything she sings with a blues sensibility. Despite the fact that she's at the top of her game, a spirit-sapping dearth of good gigs in recent years has pushed Benin to take matters into her own hands.

Rather than focusing on promoting her own career, she's doubling down on the Bay Area scene, producing ambitious events such as Saturday's "Just Like a Woman" concert at Berkeley's Freight & Salvage. Partially underwritten by a modest Indiegogo campaign, it's an old-school revue showcasing a stellar array of Bay Area talent backed by pianist Tammy Hall's all-female band with incantatory harpist-vocalist Destiny Muhammad.

Benin will sing a few pieces herself, but she's mostly turning the spotlight on her colleagues, including Lady Bianca, a prodigious blues singer and pianist who has recorded with Frank Zappa, Sly and the Family Stone, Taj Mahal and Van Morrison.

"Hands down, she's probably the best in the Bay Area, and to me she doesn't have the local recognition she deserves," says Benin, 59, who's probably best known as a founding member of Linda Tillery's Grammy-nominated Cultural Heritage Choir. "She's like one of those '20 Feet From Stardom' singers who catapulted people to the top because of that gospel sound that they put behind them."

Rather than merely rounding up talent, Benin is guiding the proceedings with a firm hand to ensure the material fulfills her other agenda, highlighting "the more invisible stuff, the songwriters and composers," she says. "When it comes to black women, the singer-songwriters never get discussed. We talk about Carole King but not Valerie Simpson. Even Aretha did a fair amount of writing, and that never gets talked about."

Stepping into the producer's role doesn't mean that Benin is backing away from performing (she's at the Solano County Events Center in Vallejo this afternoon with the dynamic Terrie Odabi). But she's definitely looking to pass the torch. One of the acts on Saturday's bill is MZSwitchedUp, a duo made up of sisters Millenia and Zandra Kay, ages 14 and 11, respectively, who accompany themselves on multiple instruments while singing R&B hits and originals.

Benin has taken it upon herself to mentor many young singers over the years, including Troutt, who met Benin about a decade ago after Benin sang at the Bay Area Black Expo in Oakland.

Powerfully impressed by the performance, Troutt was even more surprised when Benin, who had seen her perform with the Oakland Youth Chorus, greeted her by saying, " 'I know who you are.' That blew my mind," says Troutt, who went on to tour with group.

"Rhonda has been a mentor of mine. She's a real advocate of jazz, soul and blues, and always challenged me to listen widely and check out music from the original sources. When I go to her shows, she always puts me on the stage. She'll call my name out and have me come up and sing, introducing me to her audience."

Tight-knit family

Growing up in a tight-knit family in Los Angeles's Crenshaw district, Benin benefited greatly from living near the successful African American professionals and entertainers of the upscale Baldwin Hills neighborhood. While she excelled as a singer, winning a high-profile talent show at the Hollywood Bowl in 1972 with a vocal trio, she didn't think about music as a vocation until after college, when she took a job in the mailroom at CBS.

"That's when the bug really bit me," Benin says, "because I could go in the commissary and, with four variety shows being taped, you'd see every major act.' "

Her career seemed to be on track when she landed a gig with Memphis-born R&B singer Randy Brown, who had signed to Casablanca Records. But after months of rehearsal, the tour was canceled and she and two other backup singers were suddenly left unemployed. They decided to stick together, and with the mid-1970s Los Angeles recording scene bustling, they wangled their way into dozens of sessions.

"We'd drive to different studios, park the car and watch who went in," Benin recalls. "We'd wait 20 or 30 minutes, ring the buzzer and say we were with them. We'd get in the studio, and the men weren't going to run out three girls in their 20s.

"Everybody was recording. We'd mostly get into rhythm section sessions. I'd write a hook, we'd run it down in the hallway and then go back in the studio and jump up and start singing."

Benin was teaching and gigging when a weekend job with Maria Muldaur in 1989 brought her to the Bay Area. She fell in love with Oakland, and when the summer came around, she came back to hang out and never went home. For the first decade, she supported herself working for arts organizations such as the Oakland Ensemble Theater and the Oakland Youth Chorus.

She credits Tillery and her experience singing with the Cultural Heritage Choir, which performs April 12 at the SFJazz Center, with grounding her in the African American bedrock of blues and spirituals. In many ways, "Just Like a Woman" builds on work that Tillery has been doing for decades.

"I often get ideas about how to present black musical culture in a positive way, and I think she's taken the ball and run with it," Tillery says. "Rhonda is unapologetic on her stance about black culture, and sometimes she's misunderstood. What she's really committed to is challenging people to be forthright about musical origins, giving credit where it's due, which is a good thing. Now she's rounding up some really vital voices and saying, 'Let's make our own show.' "